Research Papers

Family
Reunification or Point-based Immigration
System? The Case of the U.S. and Mexico(Get a copy here)

While the immigration policy in the U.S. is mainly
oriented to family reunification, in Australia, Canada and the U.K. it is a points-based immigration system
which main objective is
to attract high skilled immigrants. This paper compares both
immigration policies through the
transition for the U.S. and Mexico. I find that: (i) The point system
increases the average
years of the immigrants by 3.5 years. (ii) Migration reduces
inequality, more significantly if
the immigration policy is the point system and increases output per
capita differences between
both countries. (iii) The offspring of the immigrants invest more in
human capital than the U.S.
natives. (iv) The earnings ratio immigrants to U.S. natives is lower
under the quota system
than under the point system but along the transition it reverses.

A
Macroeconomic Analysis on
Immigrants' Self-Selection and its Implications(Get a copy here)

This paper investigates the
interaction between human capital accumulation and labor mobility
across countries. To this end, I build a model economy with two
locations populated by households that make decisions on migration and
their level of human capital. The model economy considers two sources
of self-selection, years of scooling (observable) and ability
(unobservable). Positive self-selection on years of schooling and
ability arises when differences in TFP between the source economy and
the host economy are relatively small, but if these differences
increase, then self-selection becomes negative on years of schooling
although remains positive on ability. I also find that investment in
human capital is higher in a world where households can migrate from
one location to another than in a world where they cannot which gives
evidence in favor to the induced education hypothesis in the brain
drain literature. I quantify the effect of the brain drain on
differences in output per capita across countries and find that
migration decreases output per capita differences across countries.
Finally, the quantitative implications of the model are contrasted to
data on immigrants from Mexico to the U.S. and the model is able to
generate the observed self-selection pattern between these two
countries.

The
Effect of International
Trade Barriers on Migration Flows
(with Antonia Díaz and Fernando Perera-Tallo)

This
paper analyzes the effects of trade barriers in
international trade by considering labor mobility across countries. A
well-known result in international trade theory is that if trade takes
place between a large economy and a small economy, the former can
improve its terms of trade by imposing trade barriers without incurring
any costs. In our dynamic model this result holds when the possibility
of migration flows is not considered. But, since trade barriers
increase wage differences across economies, we allow for labor mobility
and find that trade barriers foster migration from South to North. This
migration flow represents a significant extra effect that has to be
considered. The result is that labor per capita decreases in the North
due to migration flows and, therefore, per capita income and the per
capita publicly provided good also decrease. Then, the North is hit by
its own trade policy so the main implication of the model is
that concern should not be on migration flows but on trade barriers.

Migration and InequalityThis
paper studies how
migration and inequality affect each other.
First, it studies the effect of differences in within country
inequality across countries on migration. Second, it studies the
effect of migration on inequality in the immigrants' source
country. To this end, a dynamic international economy with a large
country and a small country is built. The small economy differs in
its TFP ratio to the large economy with three different TFP ratios
being considered in this study. Households decide investment in
physical capital, in human capital and decide whether to migrate
to the large economy. Results find that the migration rate is
higher when both countries have similar inequality levels and that
migration reduces inequality in the small economy.